Re-supply
Each austral summer a United States Coast Guard icebreaker busts a ship channel to Marble Point in order to deliver helicopter fuel. The ship usually can reach within about one-quarter of a mile from the beach. Fuel is then pumped ashore. Formerly, personnel pumped the aviation fuel into 20,000 gallon bladders for storage. However, the fuel bladders were replaced with steel tanks.
Support personnel re-supply the camp annually via a convoy of over-the-ice vehicles from McMurdo Station. Drivers maneuver 15-ton Delta cargo vehicles equipped with large balloon-type tires over a more than 50-mile ice road. Alternatively, vehicles towing snow sleds are used to transport cargo. Drivers also deliver food, construction equipment, and scientific equipment that is staged at Marble Point for subsequent airlift to field camps.
Flags placed approximately every quarter mile mark much of the ice road to Marble Point. Drivers carry global positioning devices as navigational aids during the seven hour journey. Waste materials (including human waste) from Marble Point and garbage dropped off from inland research stations are back-loaded to McMurdo Station for disposal. The supply season runs from mid-October to late November or early December.
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